Apple Experiences Crisis of Confidence as Top AI Researchers Leave Amid AI Talent War

Senior AI researchers are leaving Apple amid a "crisis of confidence" within the company, with some poached by tech rivals. Apple has lost around a dozen AI team members, including top researchers, with the latest departures including former Apple AI exec Ruoming Pang and two former colleagues who are now joining Meta's Superintelligence Labs team. AI recruitment firm Razoroo suggests that the loss of Pang has opened the floodgates for more poaching, with some companies viewing it as "open season" on Apple's engineers.

Apple Inc. is facing a significant challenge in its artificial intelligence (AI) division as senior researchers and engineers continue to leave the company for competing firms. This exodus, which has seen around a dozen departures since the beginning of the year, has raised concerns over the sustainability of Apple’s AI development efforts [1].

The latest departures include Ruoming Pang, the former leader of Apple’s Foundation Models (AFM) team, and two former colleagues who have joined Meta’s Superintelligence Labs team. Pang’s departure is particularly notable, as he was instrumental in defining the department’s strategic direction and played a crucial role in the development of AI technologies like Siri [1]. His exit, reportedly in exchange for a compensation package exceeding $200 million, has triggered internal uncertainty and further departures [1].

The trend of AI talent leaving Apple is not isolated to the AFM team. The company has also experienced losses among senior LLM researchers and engineers, with some joining Meta and others moving to startups [1]. The potential loss of key teams, such as those behind Apple’s open-source machine learning framework MLX, poses a significant threat to Apple’s vision of running advanced AI models efficiently on its own hardware [1].

Apple has responded to these departures by offering marginal pay raises to its AI staff, but these increases have fallen short of the compensation levels offered by competing firms [1]. The company’s internal challenges extend beyond the AI division, with recent executive changes adding to the sense of uncertainty and dissatisfaction among employees [2].

The exodus of AI talent has raised questions about Apple’s ability to maintain its competitive edge in the global AI race. As competitors like Meta actively recruit members from Apple’s AI teams, the company faces the real risk of falling further behind [1].

In response to these challenges, Apple has formed a new team called Answers, Knowledge, and Information (AKI) to explore the development of a stripped-down rival to ChatGPT [2]. This team, led by Robby Walker, is building an “answer engine” capable of crawling the web to respond to general-knowledge questions. While the project is still in its early stages, it signals Apple’s commitment to addressing the gaps in its AI capabilities and maintaining its leadership position in the tech industry.

References:
[1] https://www.ainvest.com/news/apple-ai-talent-exodus-intensifies-key-researchers-defect-meta-2508/
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-08-03/apple-s-chatgpt-rival-from-new-answers-team-iphone-17-spotted-in-the-wild-mdvmqs6g